In his comments to fundraisers captured on video, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said 47% of Americans would almost automatically vote for President Barack Obama because they were “dependent” on the government, in part because they received government benefits and paid no federal income taxes.

Here’s a quick answer. Roughly half of U.S. households that pay no federal income tax are exempted because of basic provisions such as limitations on tax for low-income earners, according to a 2011 study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The other half benefit from targeted breaks (known to tax geeks as “tax expenditures”), such as assistance for the working poor and for children in moderate-income families. Seniors also benefit from some of these targeted breaks.

To analyze which breaks are most important in moving people off the income-tax rolls, the TPC study arranged these tax expenditures into eight categories:

Elderly tax benefits (the extra standard deduction for the elderly, the exclusion of a portion of Social Security benefits, and the credit for the elderly);
Credits for children and the working poor (the child tax credit, the child and dependent care tax credit, and the Earned Income Tax Credit);
Exclusion of other cash transfers (such as welfare and disability payments);
Tax-exempt interest and some other deductions, such as for retirement savings;
Itemized deductions;
Education credits;
Other credits; and
Reduced rates on capital gains and dividends (zero rate on gains and dividends that would otherwise be taxed at 10% or 15%, 15% rate combined with credits).




he just keeps making it harder for himself

Romney is an idiot.

I''m not saying Obama is amazing but out of the two...

I don't think Romney wants to win this election :P Not sure how anyone making less than his middle class marker of $250k will vote for him tbh...

I just can't get over the fact that the greatest nation on earth can only come up with these two assclowns to run for president.

This is a direct result of the government program to dumb down the American people.

We see that it has worked beyond all expectations.

Gary Johnson >

QFT

If you have to make 250k a year to be middle class then what am I at my 25k a year? And thats at best.

Low class!

poverty

xin I think thats to low to even be part of piss poor broke. If 250k a year is middle class then 150k has to be low class.

fluff if I made 250k a year where I lived I would be considered in the upper high class. 35k - 50k a year here is middle class. So actually my little 25k would be low class.

But then again we have to go by Romny's saying of 250k is middle class

America is not the greatest nation in the world. BAM. But beside that any nation could come up with a better conservative candidate than Mitt Romney. Your political situation is just fluffed up to hell and your two party hate eachother system is another big part of that.

by romney standard, i would be low class but i do pay taxes

and wont be voting fo him

The biggest irony is that Romney and most of his cronies pay a significantly lower tax rate than I do because their buddy Grover Norquist as gotten so many tax exemptions for wealthy people that Warren Buffet really does have a lower tax rate than his secretary.

America no longer picks from the two worst candidates, but from the two most inane. Able to look good, speak in sound bites, have ZERO skeletons in the closet, and raise a fluff ton of money by making promises to wealthy people that guys like me have to pay for.

If there was any place better, I'd probably go there - but there aren't too many places that I'd want to go that wont try to control my every waking action with nannyhood.

40k for a family of four is considered "poor", so you're basically rich!

To be fair to Romney, none of the Republicans had a shot. Obama has plenty of weaknesses, but the candidates are all weighed down with the sheer mass of nonsense made up in the right wing media the past 4 years.

It may sound good on Fox News and in WSJ Editorials, but once the Republicans had to start owning up to the red-meat propaganda they signed on to, they were toast.


I'm eagerly awaiting the debates =)

Exactly. Since they are "Tax Credits", the politicians get to come home and say they "cut taxes" when in reality it is the same as a spending program. Hypocrisy example number eleventy billion.

The worst part of this is that this video came out with too much time between now and the election. Now the American voter has time to forget all of this stuff in time to vote for him.

Do I have permission to link that video again about a week before the election?

I guess 76% of Americans are agreeing with him...according to CNBC anyway.

What's the debate here? Are 47% NOT dependent on the govt?

I heard that early voting starts in a week in States. Am I wrong?

Wish I did make 40k a year. But that 25k covers me, my wife and 4 kids. So my 25k and family of 6 trumps your 40k and family of 4 :P lol

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49071984

there's the poll, vote and see where Romney stands with his comment...not too sure this will hurt him for the election.

I don't think there shouldnt be such a thing as welfare

If there wasn't it would take care of a lot of debt... I'm sick of supporting lazy drug addicts

I'd imagine most decent, working people agree with Romney. The media is making a huge deal about this because it fits perfectly with their narrative, even though their narrative is contrary to what most Americans believe. 47% is too high of a number because it includes seniors, soldiers, etc., but the underlying point is valid. There is a huge unproductive class in the US that will vote for Obama without seriously weighing any issues. Romney's challenge is to overcome that.

He was speaking about his odds of winning and being honest with these donors about the challenge of overcoming the Democrats handing out cigarettes to the mooches of society on the street corner in exchange for votes, as well as those that live off the government that fear getting cut off and will show up to vote for self preservation.

While I would sooner stab myself in the belly button with a red hot poker than cast a vote for Mitt Romney, I have to agree with Klown here. Romney's numbers are off, but his point is valid. We are increasingly building the numbers of those who truly are dependent on government. For many of those people - those who do not realize that a much better life is possible if they break those shackles - voting against Romney would seem to be a vote for self preservation. As such, he automatically loses those votes, no matter what he says or does.

Aside from getting the numbers wrong, I really don't see what's so outlandish or outrageous about Romney's statement.

Buch... that statement is very very wrong but meh.

"“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. … These are people who pay no income tax. … [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Do you really see nothing insulting about that? He flat out said that 47% of people take no personal responsibility or care for their lives and are entitled people... that is pretty insulting.

I do agree that a lot of what is being said is blowing it out of proportion but his sentences there are pretty insulting to half of America.

Insulting or not, is it really so bad to live in reality? The context in which he is saying this is that he cannot get those votes no matter what, so why try? I've long thought that there is probably a solid 35-40% on each side that vote R or D no matter who the candidate is, so why should a R care what liberals think or a D care what conservatives think? Democrats have long noticed this, but Republicans are just beginning to see this. Too long Republicans have cared what MSM have said about them, when MSM will target them no matter what they say.

What Romney said rings true whether his numbers are exactly correct or not.

locket, while the number of 47% is incorrect, there is a growing segment of the US population which does exhibit exactly the behavior being described here. We have created a class of people here who literally do not take responsibility for their own lives... who live off the tax money provided by those who work. More and more, people discover that they can make more money taking unemployment, free or subsidized housing, free food, free medicine, even free or subsidized cellular phones.

It is disconcerting for me how often lately I'll be able to offer a former employee some temporary work, only to be told "Well, I'll have to see if that will screw up my unemployment."

It's just what happens when you allow a massive bureaucracy which oversees 300 million people to take money from some and give it to others. There will invariably be massive amounts of incompetence, fraud and waste.

As CKHustler pointed out.. insulting or not, it's reality.

The real number is between 10 and 20% if we consider income and payroll taxes for people between 20 and 60 years old, so yeah, it is a huge fluffup.

Worse, someone that isn't paying those two types of taxes right now likely paid them some time ago or will pay them in the near future, because that is how life works.

Smearing all of them ( or all people that vote democrat, for that matter ) is just too stupid.

hmm, I wanted to throw a few things out there:

in terms of your federal government about 70% of their expenditures(greater then total revenues) is spent on medicare/medicaid/social security/military/interest.

in terms of welfare recipients it depends how you count it but a few searches on google came up with the 1.7% of americans recieve more then 50% of their income from the government. Not exactly crippling figures.

one of the biggest issues is that everyone is so split. Not only can you not find solutions to your problems, but no one can even seem to agree on what the problems are.

I DISAGREE!

I agree with you to a point buch. If they are lazy then I say fluff them. However if they do have a job and still need help then at least they are working.

But then again if Clinton had not of signed all those free trade craps most of our jobs that this country lost in the late 90's and into the early 2000's might still be here.

Obama is just proving that the black man is equal to the white man in that it does not matter what you are this country is fluffed either way.

He misses SO many opportunities each time they ask him questions like this that I can't figure out what the campaign is thinking.

The answer is: "Yes, it troubles me that we have a government deeply in debt, where un-and-underemployment tops 15% and where large majorities of Americans have less hope for the future. The 47% is why I'm running. I'm not offering more handouts on borrowed Chinese money, I'm offering a pathway to opportunity."

Or on his middle class $250k answer: "Yes, I want this to be middle income and I don't consider it to be wealthy in many of American's dense urban areas. The President just as much. The difference being that median income and median family income have dropped under him. I have a plan to bring that number up and to put hard working American families back to work."

Instead he goes defensive. It reeks of political amateurism.

Of course between him and Obama, I suspect the ground is unknowingly shifting under both for a viable third party candidate to play spoiler in 2016. I forget the name of the group, but they were able to secure the possibility of an independent candidate on something like 85% of state ballots. Think Roosevelt, Wallace, and Perot.

I just don't like the ppl on welfare around here and I am jealous of the fact they get to use government money to buy cigarettes lottery tickets and booze why won't the government support my bad habits.... not fair

To be fair, if you're only offering temp work, that IS a valid concern. Because then what after the work with you is over? Depending on where you live, finding work is beyond difficult, to the point that its getting stupid. And then sadly, being overqualified makes it even harder to even get crap work. I wish I didn't hear so often that I wouldn't be offered a job because I would just leave when I found a better one in my field.

Right now ill hire a fluffing doctor there is no such thing as over qualified your going to get 9 dollars an hour and bust your ass a minimum of 12 hours a day 7 days a week. Oh except Sunday noon to 5 that day. But ppl say they are over qualified to do it and would rather sit at home

It is not very democratic if you only have 2 options both which need 1 billion in fundraising from corporations/interest groups to even run.

Oh I agree, lostmonk. I don't blame those people who think of how they're going to pay the bills three weeks down the road before taking a temporary job.

But it highlights a giant flaw in the system. Unemployment assistance should not be a disinsentive to take any work available. If we're going to have publically funded unemployment insurance, it should allow people to take temporary work and then resume their benefits immediately when the job ends. It's just common sense. Forcing or encouraging people to turn down those jobs only costs us all more money.

Where I live, some large agricultural operations actually fly people in from Jamaica, build housing for them, and pay them 11 bucks an hour because they can't find Americans willing to do the job. If they could find Americans willing to work for 13 bucks an hour, I'm pretty certain they'd be hiring them instead. To a lot of people 13 bucks an hour may seem low, but around here it is at least a "living wage". I can't understand why we extend unemployment benefits up to and beyond two years while any job like this goes unfilled.

Same here there are farmers that will give you a place for you and your family to live pay their utilities and prolly pay around the same 11 dollars an hour but no one wants to work with hogs so they stay unemployed and the farmers fly guys from south America in to work instead

Sounds more like H1B visas and I wouldn't necessarily call it because locals don't want to take the job. There are definitely many abusing the unemployment system, but a fair number have been laid off and are seeking work. The problem is that many of the open jobs required advanced skills, training or education that those laid off do not possess. There was a good story about auto industry on this very subject in the Washington Post a couple months back.

Folks should take any work that they can find, but they should also be upgrading the education/skills/training to meet the current demand. I think that's the big hangup.

Well in Alabama you have to be able to legally work in the US and they run you through some crap that shows it too. Something like e-verify or other. It also gives employers the right to legally discriminate against those who are legal US citizens like my wife who because she looks mexican but she is really filipino and because I am latino and she is married to me with a spanish last name she basically doesn't even get a chance to get a job here. Tho I can not prove it.

Anyway farmers are now complaining because they have no workers and since most of their workers where from central america they have to find people (or ways around the law) to get people to work for them.

Ok, so this would be equally "ok" coming from Obama:

"Well, you know, 63% of America is white and we all know they are just racist bigots who would never vote for a black man, so why even bother?"

I mean, sure, the 63% number may be off, but as you said, what does the number matter? The point is still valid (he isn't changing racist's minds) so lets just give him a pass and not be insulted?

Atryn, it comes down to this, of those insulted, how many were actually thinking of voting for Romney?

You do know Obama has made statements just like that before right?

"Are some voters not going to vote for me because I’m African American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn’t vote for me because of my politics."

So...since conservatives/libertarians/(any political view that doesn't agree with him) aren't voting for him, what should he care if he insults them with a racist jab? Same logic...

of those insulted, how many are voters, is the question.. how many can't vote cause its hard to get a state ID to even vote in the first place..

CKHustler said it better than I could have.

Similar without the insult.. odd. Perhaps you should watch him on whats his names talkshow the other day. He has clear views that he said he would do his best to be President for even those who do not vote for him. That is a very different message and tone.

http://www.rawstory.com/...over-secret-romney-video/

Check out the video.. perfect reactions from Jon Stewart.

Damn... Stewart is in good form there.

Obama is an undercover terrorist

That's because you guys didn't elect Dale Peterson. I think your problems would easily have been solved by him.